> the team took a small sample from the cord’s loose end and used an instrument called a mass spectrometer to measure tiny variations in the hair’s isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. Those isotopes hold clues to a person’s diet, such as the amounts of maize and meat they ate in life. Maize, for example, is among the crops that rely on a form of photosynthesis known as C4 photosynthesis, which causes more of the isotope carbon-13 to build up in their tissues than in many other types of plants. Elevated levels of carbon-13 in a hair sample would most likely signal a maize-rich diet, Hyland says. Similarly, a meat-rich diet tends to raise the body’s levels of the isotope nitrogen-15.
It's so impressive that we can estimate someone's diet from a hair sample. I had no idea that this was possible.
echelon 11 hours ago [-]
Spectroscopy is powerful.
There are various forms of spectroscopy that leverage different physical characteristics: vibration, absorbance, emission, charge, etc.
It's spectroscopy that allows us to read the molecular atmospheric composition of exoplanets and that has the greatest chance of yielding detection of alien biosignatures or technosignatures given our current scientific understanding and capability.
Spectroscopic techniques are vital for remote sensing, cancer detection, biochemistry, materials science, and more.
dyauspitr 12 hours ago [-]
You can tell if someone has smoked weed at any point in the past 3 months if your hair is long enough.
dingnuts 12 hours ago [-]
that's why stoners are known for having buzz cuts
AndrewOMartin 11 hours ago [-]
The stoners who have an interest in not being exposed as such.
geoduck14 10 hours ago [-]
Isn't this the reason why Britney Spears cut her hair a coupleb of decades back?
n1b0m 4 hours ago [-]
No, she did it as an act of rebellion and to reclaim control amidst intense media scrutiny and a feeling of being constantly judged. She described it as a way to push back against the constant pressure and invasion of her privacy.
I'd say it was part of some sort of manic/meltdown episode with multiple things going on with some logic. She was under a conservatorship for good reason, it's not some Deep State conspiracy.
I'd like to hear her explanation in her words.
[edit] - From her book
I went into a hair salon, and I took the clippers, and I shaved off all my hair.
Everyone thought it was hilarious. Look how crazy she is! Even my parents acted embarrassed by me. But nobody seemed to understand that I was simply out of my mind with grief. My children had been taken away from me.
With my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom. No one would talk to me anymore because I was too ugly.
My long hair was a big part of what people liked—I knew that. I knew a lot of guys thought long hair was hot.
Shaving my head was a way of saying to the world: Fuck you. You want me to be pretty for you? Fuck you. You want me to be good for you? Fuck you. You want me to be your dream girl? Fuck you. I’d been the good girl for years. I’d smiled politely while TV show hosts leered at my breasts, while American parents said I was destroying their children by wearing a crop top, while executives patted my hand condescendingly and second-guessed my career choices even though I’d sold millions of records, while my family acted like I was evil. And I was tired of it.
At the end of the day, I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was see my boys. It made me sick thinking about the hours, the days, the weeks I missed with them. My most special moments in life were taking naps with my children. That’s the closest I’ve ever felt to God—taking naps with my precious babies, smelling their hair, holding their tiny hands.
WalterBright 10 hours ago [-]
> Some researchers had speculated that literacy might have been widespread in Inca society, but Hyland’s discovery is the first physical evidence. Previously, “We had to rely on written documents by colonial era writers after the Spanish conquest,”
If literacy were widespread, why did only colonial writers write about them?
kragen 4 hours ago [-]
You've jumped to a reasonable but incorrect conclusion: that only colonial writers wrote about the Incans. In fact, we know that Incans did write in khipus about other Incans, including in the colonial era after the conquest, because Spanish-speaking writers tell us so. So why can't we just read the Incans' own accounts, including from before the conquest? There are two major reasons:
1. We don't know how to read khipus except for numbers. Even that knowledge was rediscovered rather than being preserved and passed down to current archæologists. There's debate over whether there was even a systematic written language encoded in the non-arithmetic khipus at all. Maybe each khipu user had their own system for encoding non-arithmetic data as khipu numbers, so that each person's khipu was incomprehensible to anyone else. And maybe the features of khipu such as fiber colors that aren't known to encode any information actually don't encode any information.
2. The Spanish eventually banned khipu making as a form of idolatry and burned all the khipu they could find. So the surviving khipu corpus is very small, about 1400 texts.
So, a great deal of detailed historical information about the late Inca empire and early colonial era was definitely recorded in khipu, but most of it was burned, and we will probably never be able to read the rest; possibly nobody ever could have.
lukeschlather 10 hours ago [-]
The conquistadors burned most native writings they could find, and didn't necessarily write down what they were burning. They also killed a lot of people, along with European disease, there were not many people left who were able to write, and writing carried risks.
ethan_smith 46 minutes ago [-]
Khipu literacy doesn't produce permanent documents like European writing - it's a tactile recording system using knots that would degrade over time, and Spanish colonizers systematically destroyed khipus as part of their cultural suppression campaigns.
marc_abonce 10 hours ago [-]
In this context, literacy would probably be constrained to accounting or similar forms of record keeping, rather than literature as we know it nowadays.
Or at least that's the mainstream theory about quipus today, although their content is still being disputed today.
mc32 9 hours ago [-]
Do we normally say Europeans or Chinese were literate 400 years ago, even with woodblocks and printing presses? Some people knew how to read and write and do math, sure, but would we call them literate societies? Even at 10% proficiency we don't tend to call societies literate.
nis0s 10 hours ago [-]
Cool article! My favorite fact about the Incan empire is that the University of Oxford is older than it.
That's correct, though the article mentions the Aztecs, but thinking of the Inca empire as a standalone unit is sort of dubious. The Inca were just the named phase of upper Andean civilization when the conquistadors arrived. Most of what's considered Inca empire was already in existence for a long time. It's much more reasonable to consider upper Andean civilization as a whole instead of just looking at the final administration and taking that name.
throw-the-towel 10 hours ago [-]
And it lasted less than 100 years, barely a blip by historical standards!
Depending on where you live yes in some country 300/400€ is 2/3 months salary
singularity2001 3 hours ago [-]
or a noble's message written on behalf by a commoner 'scribe'
This article is a case study of non sequitur
metalman 9 hours ago [-]
I have an old hand made carpet that was hemed and repaired with someones hair. In korea women would weave special sandles for sickened husbands to wear for healing, made from there hair, "hairwork" is common as a form of mourning jewlery going back.hundreds of years.
I know of native superstitions and practices, around hair which are quite varied, that are still followed.
And so, I will state the scientific principal that one data point, is zero data points, interesting perhaps, but the very definition of inconclusive.
It's so impressive that we can estimate someone's diet from a hair sample. I had no idea that this was possible.
There are various forms of spectroscopy that leverage different physical characteristics: vibration, absorbance, emission, charge, etc.
It's spectroscopy that allows us to read the molecular atmospheric composition of exoplanets and that has the greatest chance of yielding detection of alien biosignatures or technosignatures given our current scientific understanding and capability.
Spectroscopic techniques are vital for remote sensing, cancer detection, biochemistry, materials science, and more.
Can you link your source?
I'd say it was part of some sort of manic/meltdown episode with multiple things going on with some logic. She was under a conservatorship for good reason, it's not some Deep State conspiracy.
I'd like to hear her explanation in her words.
[edit] - From her book
If literacy were widespread, why did only colonial writers write about them?
1. We don't know how to read khipus except for numbers. Even that knowledge was rediscovered rather than being preserved and passed down to current archæologists. There's debate over whether there was even a systematic written language encoded in the non-arithmetic khipus at all. Maybe each khipu user had their own system for encoding non-arithmetic data as khipu numbers, so that each person's khipu was incomprehensible to anyone else. And maybe the features of khipu such as fiber colors that aren't known to encode any information actually don't encode any information.
2. The Spanish eventually banned khipu making as a form of idolatry and burned all the khipu they could find. So the surviving khipu corpus is very small, about 1400 texts.
So, a great deal of detailed historical information about the late Inca empire and early colonial era was definitely recorded in khipu, but most of it was burned, and we will probably never be able to read the rest; possibly nobody ever could have.
Or at least that's the mainstream theory about quipus today, although their content is still being disputed today.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/university-oxford-...
https://www.irresistibleme.com/collections/human-hair-wigs
This article is a case study of non sequitur